Parky pounces on Bantams slow starters: 'Don't know if it's a mental thing'

 

Bantams boss Phil Parkinson is concerned that his team are letting sides get the advantage with sluggish starts in both half's recent games, blimey, has he seen some of the Shrimers matches recently, could be a boring game!

 

Parky told www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/: “I can’t work out why it keeps happening but it’s something we have to rectify. We’d spoken to the lads beforehand and told them how important it was. You look at how we played against Wimbledon and there was not a great deal of difference. But we scored a couple of early goals in that game which settled everybody down. We didn’t have a great first ten minutes of the second half and that’s happened the last couple of home games. I don’t know if it’s a mental thing but we’ve got to look at it again. We’ll sit down with them this week and go through it.”

 

Oh well, trouble is the old ex-head farmer has a decent record visiting Roots Hall with ColU, Hull City and, more recently, Charlton Athletic, then again his old nemisis Steve Tilson has left the club, and I'd put present Blues boss Paul Sturrock up against him anytime.

 

He added: “We’ll remind the lads about it again because we can’t allow it to continue. There was a little bit of tension on Saturday in the way both teams played. We still had enough chances to win the game but didn’t work the keeper enough. When we got going, we had all the play in the first half. Jon (McLaughlin) hardly touched the ball. But the period after half-time wasn’t so good and we conceded the goal. After that we played well again and had a lot of decent opportunities.”

 

We are of course in a bit of a slump ourselves, no win in five matches, could be closer than the pundits think.

 

The excellent Bantams fansite BoyfromBrazil has sadly decided to close, more on that elsewhere, but there is some decent Bantams chat going on here: www.claretandbanter.com/

 

 

Personal information
Full name	Philip John Parkinson
Date of birth	1 December 1967 (1967-12-01) (age 44)
Place of birth	Chorley, Lancashire, England
Height	6 ft 0 in (1.83 m)
Playing position	Midfielder
Club information
Current club	Bradford City
Youth career
	Southampton
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps†	(Gls)†
1985–1988	Southampton	0	(0)
1988–1992	Bury	145	(5)
1992–2003	Reading	361	(20)
Teams managed
2003–2006	Colchester United
2006	Hull City
2008–2011	Charlton Athletic
2011–	Bradford City
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. † Appearances (Goals).